The Roommate Anthology
by AlexisKeller
Summary: "We are not friends. We just live in the same apartment to conveniently divide the rent. We're roommates, not friends." Pairings, sort of: SasuSaku, NaruHina, ShikaIno, NejiTen, SuiKarin.


**-you drink a lot**

"Get your shit off the couch, Hozuki," Sasuke growled at Suigetsu, who was sprawled on the sofa and surrounded by a dozen or so beer bottles. "Sakura's coming over."

"So what? 'S not like she's never been 'ere b'fore," Suigetsu said slowly.

"You scared her away the last time, you fucking idiot."

"Watching out for the girlfriend, are we, baby Uchiha? _Nice_," He drawled before taking a swig from the open beer bottle in his hand, making sure Sasuke was aware that he wasn't going to be moving anytime soon.

Sasuke sighed. He'd invited over his girlfriend to his apartment because he knew that Neji, Naruto, Shikamaru and Kiba actually had dates for Friday night. But he hadn't been banking on Suigetsu staying home—_while having a girlfriend_—and ruining his plans.

"Don't you have a girlfriend?" Sasuke demanded angrily.

_Anything to get him out of the house_, he thought desperately as he glanced at his wristwatch. _Almost eight_, he absently noted. Sakura was going to be here soon.

"We're taking a li'l time off. Karin says I drink too much. HA. Like tha's possible." Sasuke tried his best to make out his words—he was fully slurring now.

_Great._

"Yeah, wonder why she'd say that," Sasuke couldn't help saying, his voice heavily dripping with sarcasm.

_You're a fucking alcoholic, you insane idiot._

He glanced at his watch again. _Almost eight. Damn it._

Sasuke decided to go all in with the threatening. "Look, Hozuki, I need you on your best behavior, alright? If you scare her off again, I'll fucking kill you. And then I'll make sure she passes your Friday night drinking habits along to Karin as well, got it?"

Suigetsu turned to him slowly, eyes focusing on Sasuke's now smug expression, "You'd really do that to me, asshole?"

"And wouldn't think twice about it."

Suigetsu's eyes narrowed at Sasuke, and he cursed loud enough for the neighbors to shut their windows. "_Fine_."

"Good," Sasuke barked out.

"Whatever," he grumbled with a scowl. "Just so you know, you ruined my night, you asshole."

Sasuke raised his eyebrows.

Really? Getting that wasted for no reason to the point of nearly passing out in front of the TV was 'his night'? Funny. Then every night must be his night.

He turned to his watch. A little over eight. Alright. They could do this if they worked together.

"Alright, start cleaning, Hozuki," Sasuke ordered as he marched over to the television and shut it off.

After a heavy sigh from Suigetsu, they both began to pick up the bottles around them and cleaning up.

"Hey, wait, Uchiha," Suigetsu spoke up after a while. "Hand me that white container over by th't table, will ya?"

Sasuke looked up from the bottles he was gathering towards the coffee table. Grabbing the small, clear bottle, he noticed pills inside. "What the hell is this." He demanded as he threw it over to him.

"My medicine, if you know what I mean," Sasuke could just hear the grin in his voice. "It keeps me on my toes. 'S the best. You gotta try it sometime, man."

_Drugs. In our fucking apartment_.

Okay, who was he kidding? Here wasn't going to cut it.

Before he could demand where he got that shit and beat him senseless, the bell outside rang and Sasuke couldn't scramble up from the carpet fast enough. He grabbed his car keys and jacket and hurried for the door, moving as quick as possible.

"Hey, where ya goin', man?" Suigetsu called out curiously.

Sasuke snarled in anger. "Anywhere but here."

**..~*~..**

* * *

******..~*~..**

**-you just don't interrupt game night, bitch**

Kiba slammed his foot on the accelerator and the car speeded up in turn.

"Can you believe it? It's here. It's actually _here_," Naruto babbled next to him from the passenger seat. "_It's actually here_."

"We're nearly there." Kiba informed him, feeling the anticipation creeping up through his veins.

"It's kind of creepy how serious you guys take football, you know?" Shikamaru piped up from the backseat with a wary expression.

"_Shikamaru_," Naruto said, sounding offended.

"Oh, great," Shikamaru rubbed his temples in the face of the no doubt upcoming crap-banter that always followed when someone didn't '_respect football_'—according to the blond idiot in the passenger seat. Kiba, even. Both of them were hard-core football fans, and while everyone in the apartment—Shikamaru, Sasuke, Neji—loved it, these two took it too far. _They fucking worshiped the game_.

And Naruto, vocal as ever about his very strong football feelings, just could not let that one go. "How can you not take football seriously, especially when the Tigers and the Gators are actually having a match for the first time in ten years since their little bitch-tantrum?!"

Granted, it was an exciting event, but at the rate Kiba was driving, they'd probably be watching the game from their respected beds in the hospital. Shikamaru voiced that thought out loud, only to be answered with several other shouts from_ that stupid idiot Naruto_.

Kiba, ignoring both of the passengers in his car focused on getting back to the apartment fast enough as possible as they headed back home from KU. This wasn't just going to be a match. It was _the_ _match__._ Currently, this adrenaline-coursing moment right now, it was probably the best feeling ever. His graduation from high school hadn't been this... this _amazing_.

Okay, call them obsessed, but come on. It's _football._

"I've got the couches set up in front of the TV. Me and Neji pushed them all ahead last night." Kiba notified both of them, pleased at how everything was under control. "We've got the drinks and everything."

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "When you say drinks-"

"Beer," Kiba reassured smoothly. "What else goes better with a game?"

Even Shikamaru nodded in approval at that one. "Today's going to be a good one." He predicted with a firm surety.

"It sure as hell going to be," Kiba nodded in agreement.

* * *

"What the hell is this?" Kiba questioned in an unnaturally quiet voice as they stood in the lounge of their apartment half an hour later.

"It looks like Hozuki," Shikamaru said with a confused expression. "Though, honestly, I'm not all that sure."

Naruto, swearing loudly, tried his best to kick Suigetsu off the couch. "Oh, it's Hozuki, alright."

"Hey!" Suigetsu exclaimed as Kiba wakened him with a smack to the back of the head.

"Is that my stash?" Kiba inquired calmly as he pointed to the several bottles lying around Suigetsu.

Suigetsu shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, it's somebody's. Mine finished up long ago. Which reminds me," he threw back his head and yawned. "If you guys go out, get me something stronger, will ya?"

There was simply no way around it: Suigetsu was always a drunken idiot.

Kiba was rarely ever angry – he was fine with every fucking thing, all the fucking time. But this? This was just _wrong_.

This drunken idiot was ruining _game night_.

There were sounds of the front door opening and voices creeping into the lounge—meaning that Neji and Sasuke were back—and if it wasn't obvious enough already, Shikamaru looked at Suigetsu with a casual expression and said conversationally, "You're fucked, dude."

**..~*~..**

* * *

******..~*~..**

**-you never, ever let me study**

"Get off of this couch, Hozuki," Neji ordered menacingly.

_This is not the time to be playing around_, Neji added to himself as he watched Suigetsu wake up. His economics final was tomorrow at nine and he needed to be studying right now. And his best cramming sessions were always held here in the lounge, where Suigetsu was currently drooling on the sofa. He sighed, shuffling aside hastily thrown wrappers of barbeque flavored chips and bowls of leftover popcorn.

_He's such a slob_, he thought to himself not for the first time. The deal with the whole living with his friends in an apartment only worked well because it meant lesser rent to pay, since it was well divided amongst the five of them. But this? Neji simply couldn't live like this.

"Is this for your freak study session or something?" Suigetsu drawled slowly. "Because if you're gonna study for that test, let me tell you, man—you got this." He took a moment to yawn to himself. "I mean, think about it. You're always kissing up to that professor of yours, ain't ya?"

Neji sighed in a resigned manner. He'd previously tried to convince everyone what a bad idea it was for them to share an apartment with the _thing_—commonly known as Suigetsu, Hozuki, or even drunk bastard—and Sasuke had agreed almost immediately. But it had been the weak ones—Kiba and Naruto—who'd felt compassionate enough to allow him in. Oh, how willingly Sasuke had nearly torn off Naruto's head for it, but the harsh, cold truth was that Suigetsu was now here to stay, whether Neji liked it or not. And he definitely didn't like it.

Neji waited as patiently as he could while Suigetsu got up with his duvet wrapped around him. No, it wasn't even surprising anymore, Suigetsu always crashed on the couch—_despite the spare room they'd given him in the apartment_—that he'd even brought down half the bed sheets from the room. Talk about comfortable where you are.

And, Neji observed diligently, the _thing_ hadn't changed out his clothes for a week. But instead of nagging him about it like his inner clean-freak usually did, he decided to let this one go and get on with the studying.

As Suigetsu staggered towards the kitchen, Neji set up all is books according to importance—because according to size was just too stupid—and began.

_There's a lot to do_, he noted absently after glancing at the clock a few hours later. It was twelve already. But it didn't matter. He'd done it countless times before, he could do it now.

But his head hurt.

He needed something cold to drink, he decided to himself. Getting up, he made his way to the kitchen where Suigetsu was snoring away on the stool next to the counter.

Neji opened the fridge, only to see empty bottles. A frustrated sigh escaped his lips. He could curse that Suigetsu all the time, he told himself quietly. Now's not the time.

So maybe he shut the door of the fridge a little too hard. Maybe it hard enough that Hozuki woke up. So what?

"What'sss wrong with you, dude?" Suigetsu wanted to know. "You don't just wake someone up like th't."

"Are there any left?" Neji asked, gesturing towards the bottles in front of Suigetsu.

"What do you want?"

"A beer."

Suigetsu grinned. "Well, yer in luck." He fumbled around, trying to find a full bottle among all the empty ones. He grabbed one and handed it to Neji. "See? No need fer yer little bitch-tantrums. Situation's under control, man."

Reflecting on it, Neji should've probably known better than to accept anything—let alone a bottle—from Suigetsu. But he blamed his study-fried brain for not thinking clearly.

He remembered how fuzzy everything got after the first sip, and by the time he sat down to study again, his headache had simply amplified.

Why was everything so fuzzy?

The last thing he remembered thinking before he closed his eyes for a minute was: _What did I just drink?_

_**..~*~..**_

He woke up the next morning with everyone leaning over him, expressions curious.

"I thought you had a thing today," Shikamaru said offhandedly.

"Economics final," Neji corrected, because he wouldn't be Neji if he wasn't particular even if was probably late to his exam and his head was pounding.

"What time is it?" Neji asked, trying to understand why his head just wouldn't stop pounding.

"Nine forty-seven." Neji could just imagine Sasuke's grin as he said it from the kitchen door.

Naruto tilted his head to the side. "What happened, man?"

Good question. Now if Neji only knew.

He heard an awkward laugh from the kitchen. "Haha. Um, my bad, I guess." Suigetsu mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. "I accidently gave him the strong stuff."

"Strong stuff?" Sasuke questioned, his frown indicating how much he disliked it when Suigetsu brought illegal prescription medicine to the apartment.

"Well, I don't know how to pronounce it, so we just call it the 'white stuff'. Though, for a newbie, you might want to check out a doctor," Suigetsu said, shrugging. "Sorry, dude."

Wait. It was all coming back to him.

His exam was supposed to be at nine AM sharp, meaning he was late.

He still hadn't yet covered everything last night.

His head was pounding, because apparently Suigetsu had given him the 'strong, white stuff.'

Keeping all these reasons in mind, he calmly fisted his hands and got up from the couch slowly, eyes on Suigetsu with murderous intent present.

The thing backed away from Neji, seeming rightfully afraid for his life as everyone watched on in approval.

And, as Neji saw Sasuke walk over, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt with his eyes also on Suigetsu; as Kiba and Naruto also slowly joined them with narrowed eyes—all three seeing this as a good moment to take revenge for whatever Hozuki had done to them this time—as Shikamaru took a seat on the couch, his hands in his pockets, with immense approval written over his face, Neji knew one thing.

Maybe they weren't best friends, or even friends, but really? There was one thing they were united in agreement on. And that was Hozuki.

**..~*~..**

* * *

**1. Yo.**

**2. So I just read the last chapter and freaked out. It wasn't thought out at all, so here.**

**3. Review? :)**

**-Lexy.**


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